What Some of Our Most Read Essays of 2015 Say About You

By LARBDecember 16, 2015

What Some of Our Most Read Essays of 2015 Say About You
WHAT WAS 2015’s ZEITGEIST? Perhaps it’s to be found in this roundup of essays, reviews, and interviews that you, dear reader, picked up, shared, argued with, and even loved: Feminism. Heidegger. Race in America (and across the globe). The end of Mad Men. Why your rent is so high and your pay is so low. Protest in our time.

The following is a curated list of some of the most read articles in 2015, sorted into categories that speak to the social and cultural currents of the year. We look forward to continuing the conversation with you in 2016.

FEMINISM:


On Spinsters
by Briallen Hopper


Gender, blah, blah, blah
by Katherine Angel


Genderalizations
by Toby Lichtig


A Girl’s Guide to Sexual Purity
by Carmen Maria Machado


Reading as Kissing, Sex with Ideas: "Lesbian" Barebacking?
by Kathryn Bond Stockton


Taylor & Karlie & Lena: The Romance of Celebrity Female Friendship in the Feminist Selfie Generation
by Rachel Vorona Cote


FILM AND TV:


Game of Thrones, Season 5: "Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken" 
Fantasizing Consent
by Sarah Mesle


Brown Broads, White TV
by Rebecca Wanzo & Kyla Wazana Tompkins


Room Is the Crash of Feminism
by Sarah Blackwood


Mad Men Fantasies
by Lili Loofbourow & Phillip Maciak


She’s the Boss
by W. Kamau Bell


Mr. Robot: Season 1
by Phillip Maciak


ON WRITING AND WRITERS


Writing in Cafés: A Personal History
by Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft


Selling Out the Newspaper Comic Strip
by Luke Epplin


The Program Era and the Mainly White Room
by Juliana Spahr & Stephanie Young


Writing While Muslim: The Freedom to Be Offended
by Rafia Zakaria


A Patron Saint for Sadsacks: What Snark Says About Failure — and What Literature Says Back
Jamie Fisher on The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure


I Am a Fucking Plagiarist
by Javier Grillo-Marxuach


Susan Sontag: Critic and Crusader
by Steve Wasserman


PHILOSOPHY


Vision Science
Josh Armstrong on Seeing Things as They Are: A Theory of Perception


Fail Slow, Fail Hard
Martin Woessner on Freedom to Fail: Heidegger’s Anarchy


Are You Out of Your Mind?
Charles Clavey on The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction


Three Contemporary Spinozas
Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft on Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization and Spinoza Contra Phenomenology: French Rationalism from Cavailles to Deleuze and Spinoza for Our Time: Politics and Postmodernity


Searching for Foucault in an Age of Inequality
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Alexander Arnold on Critiquer Foucault: Les Années 1980 et la tentation néolibérale


Self, with or without Selfies
Stan Persky on Self: Philosophy in Transit


INTERVIEWS


The Blue-Collar King: An Interview with Stephen King
Angela S. Allan interviews Stephen King


Writing Against Complacency
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore interviews Jessa Crispin


A Love Letter to Los Angeles
Nicole Antonio interviews Wendy C. Ortiz


The Challenge of Protest in Our Time: Micah White on Social Change Movements, Theories of Revolution, and Moving on from Occupy Wall Street
Justin Campbell interviews Micah White


An Ongoing Autobiography of a Slightly Younger Self
Laurie Winer interviews Lena Dunham


A Religion of the Text
Ben Bush interviews Joshua Cohen


PODCASTS


Radio Hour: Debating Vanessa Place's Gone with the Wind Controversy


Radio Hour: Sam Harris on Islam and the Future of Tolerance


Colin Marshall interviews Amelia Gray


Colin Marshall interviews Jay Rubin


Radio Hour: Karina Longworth, Dana Johnson, and Farewell to Colin Marshall


Radio Hour: Naked at Lunch, Female Comedy Writers, and Vicious Disequilibrium


OTHER
or things you loved, that we love, that didn’t fit neatly into a category


Why Your Rent Is So High and Your Pay Is So Low
by Tom Streithorst


50 Shades of Libertarian Love
by Walter Benn Michaels


Queer Blood
by Ned Stuckey-French


How Does Twitter Use You?
by Matt Pearce & Julia Carrie Wong


On the New Literary Tourism
by Geoff Bendeck


Culture War: What Is It Good For?
Jacqui Shine on A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars

LARB Contributor

Share

Did you know LARB is a reader-supported nonprofit?


LARB publishes daily without a paywall as part of our mission to make rigorous, incisive, and engaging writing on every aspect of literature, culture, and the arts freely accessible to the public. Help us continue this work with your tax-deductible donation today!